Stations of the Cross from Latin America 1492 - 1992 By Adolfo Pérez Esquivel of Argentina (Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 1980) This presentation has been posted here in response to the question, “What is liberation theology?” Esquivel’s 15 Stations of the Cross are on slides 2–16. They were originally to mark the 500th anniversary of the colonisation of the Americas. The commentary alongside each is by Alastair McIntosh of Scotland. It is based around, but builds upon, original text from the CIDSE agencies (Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité) that distributed the images. I was on the management committee of one of these agencies at the time (SCIAF), which is how I had kept copies of the original 35 mm slides. They were intended for widespread use. For more background, see slides 17-18, and please feel free to make your own commentaries. You are currently looking at a .pdf version of a Powerpoint version that will have opened in Acrobat reader. To download it as a Powerpoint .ppt file, or to get a .zip file with the images scanned to 10 MB .jpg files, please navigate from this link, where you will also as of 2017 find a file of image details for specialist use: https://goo.gl/Txubwz
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Stations of the Cross from
Latin America 1492 - 1992 By Adolfo Pérez Esquivel of Argentina
(Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 1980)
This presentation has been posted here in response to the question, “What is liberation
theology?” Esquivel’s 15 Stations of the Cross are on slides 2–16. They were originally
to mark the 500th anniversary of the colonisation of the Americas. The commentary
alongside each is by Alastair McIntosh of Scotland. It is based around, but builds upon,
original text from the CIDSE agencies (Coopération Internationale pour le
Développement et la Solidarité) that distributed the images. I was on the management
committee of one of these agencies at the time (SCIAF), which is how I had kept
copies of the original 35 mm slides. They were intended for widespread use. For more
background, see slides 17-18, and please feel free to make your own commentaries.
You are currently looking at a .pdf version of a Powerpoint version that will have
opened in Acrobat reader. To download it as a Powerpoint .ppt file, or to get a .zip file
with the images scanned to 10 MB .jpg files, please navigate from this link, where you
will also as of 2017 find a file of image details for specialist use: https://goo.gl/Txubwz
15th Station – Triumph of Life – “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is
not here but has risen” (Luke 24:5). With the ships of the Conquistadors and the factories of globalisation in the
background, Christ out in nature with the sun symbolically overhead leads a march of landless Campesinos with martyrs of the
struggle, including … Alice Dumont (Argentina), Santa Dias da Silva (Brazil), Oscar Romero (El Salvador), Chico Mendes (Brazil),
Ita Ford (El Salvador), Zumbi (Brazil), Dana Tingo (Dominican Republic), Luisito Torres (El Salvador), Tupac Amaru (Peru),
Enrique Angel Angelelli (Argentina), Luis Espinal (Bolivia) and Vicente Menchu (Guatemala). R.I.P. (See next slide for exegesis).
The15th Station and
Mystical Experience
(Picture of Adolfo Pérez Esquivel – the artist)
In preparing the commentaries shown to the right of each slide, I have drawn from text published in 1992 by Misereor of Germany and also from the 1992 CIDSE handbook (Way of the Cross from Latin America), that accompanied the original 35 mm photographic slides from which this presentation was digitised. Bible passages are also as given by CIDSE. Commenting upon the “Easter Picture,” “Lenten Veil” or “Hunger Cloth” that comprises the15th and final Station, the CIDSE booklet had this to say:
“Mystical experience is of central importance in Liberation Theology. Jesus can be experienced in and with those who suffer. For those who have faith, the act of turning to the oppressed, of serving the poor, of search for freedom from exploitative structures, is also an act of love for the suffering Christ. By the same token, the resurrection will be experienced whenever life is defended. Furthermore, all life which is oppressed and extinguished by power is included in the resurrection. This concept is expressed by Adolfo Perez Esquivel in his Easter picture.”
Background to this Material As a Scottish Quaker of universalist disposition and Presbyterian background, it seems a little strange to
be placing onto the web devotional material that was widely distributed by the Roman Catholic church in 1992, but has since vanished from view. I have searched the web, but in vain, to locate the material for use in my teaching and activism. I therefore resorted to having my own 35 mm transparency set scanned.
I first came across Esquivel’s “Way of the Cross” paintings through the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF) - the official overseas relief agency of the Scottish Catholic bishops. Between the late-eighties and 1999, I was the only non-Catholic serving on their Management Committee, laterally as Chair of the Projects’ Committee, which then disbursed £2 million of grants annually in accordance with what radical Catholics call “Our best kept secret” – namely, their church’s rich and challenging social teaching.
At that time, liberation theology was being vibrantly supported and celebrated within Catholic agencies and especially SCIAF. This made it easy for me to participate, enthusiastically, in their work – something I had actually begun in 1977, when Voluntary Service Overseas had posted me, rather surprisingly, to work for two years with Archbishop Virgil Copas and the Missionaries of Charity sisters in Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea, as a vocational school deputy-headteacher and wiring up micro hydro-electric schemes.
Esquivel’s “Stations of the Cross” exemplified my admiration for radical Catholic theology which I saw as speaking to all who understand God as love. The images were distributed in Europe by CIDSE – the umbrella organisation of such Catholic relief agencies as Misereor, CAFOD, Trócaire and SCIAF.
I am puzzled as to why Esquivel’s iconic paintings seem now to have fallen into oblivion. I’d have thought that one of the big Catholic agencies might have put them on the web, the better to teach what liberation theology means. But this has not happened, so here they are - and I would welcome any opportunity that might arise to thank and ask the formal blessing of Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.